FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT STREET GANG - PAGE 3

Four members of the El Rukn street gang, including its imprisoned leader Jeff Fort, conspired to obtain money from the Libyan government by proposing to burn or blow up U.S. government buildings, vehicles and airplanes, a federal grand jury charged Thursday. "They made contact with the representatives of Libya and offered their services," U.S. Attorney Anton R. Valukas said in announcing the return of a 46-count indictment. Valukas remained tight-lipped about whether any cash was paid, where meetings were held and the identity of Libyan government representatives.

Wilbert Moore was gunned down outside a South Side barbershop seven years ago by a violent street gang known as the Hobos because he had been secretly cooperating with law enforcement, authorities say. On Thursday, authorities announced a crackdown on the gang with sweeping federal racketeering charges against its leader and eight other members for everything from narcotics trafficking to homicide, including the January 2006 slaying of Moore....

After getting out of prison in April 2006, "Shakey" Shawn Betts moved to St. Charles, but kept his trigger finger on the West Side of Chicago, police said. Betts, a leader of the "Body Snatchers" faction of the Four Corner Hustlers street gang, returned to Chicago to regain control of the corners where he and his gang wreaked havoc in the 1990s, leading to bloodshed in the streets in 2006, police said. On Wednesday, police arrested Betts and 54 other members of his gang, including several top members, after an 18-month multiple-agency drug conspiracy investigation, the largest in recent history, police said.

In a blow meant to disrupt drug sales in a South Side housing complex at the center of Chicago's fentanyl crisis, federal authorities on Wednesday lodged conspiracy charges against 47 members and associates of the street gang that controls narcotics sales there. Hundreds of police and federal agents moved against the Mickey Cobras just after dawn in a sweep of more than two dozen people with links to the gang--including a Chicago police officer who allegedly tried to help gang members stay a step ahead of the law. The gang's leader, James Austin, 29, was taken into custody in Ohio and charged in what authorities described as a sophisticated drug operation that saw heroin, crack cocaine and fentanyl distributed at the Dearborn Homes housing project.

Surrounded by the spoils of the drug trade--luxury automobiles, jewelry, cash and a small arsenal--Chicago police Wednesday said they had broken one of the West Side's largest white heroin operations with the arrests of several drug and gang leaders. The 8-month investigation included FBI and IRS agents and was launched in North Lawndale last fall after the slaying of a leader of the Conservative Vice Lords, a faction of one of the city's largest street gangs. In all, police have arrested 14 people, and warrants have been issued for three more suspects.

By Robert Becker and Andrew Martin, Tribune Staff Writers | November 15, 1996

A top-ranking member of the Maniac Latin Disciples street gang was convicted Thursday of orchestrating an ambitious plot to slaughter members of their Northwest Side rivals, the Spanish Cobras. Johnny "Loco" Almodovar, 26, was convicted of murder conspiracy, attempted murder and armed violence for sending three teams of gunmen into the streets of Humboldt Park last Feb. 13 with orders to kill members of the Cobras. In the ensuing two days, gang warfare left one victim blinded and more than a dozen others suffering other injuries, prosecutors said.

The son of imprisoned gang leader Jeff Fort pleaded not guilty Wednesday to an eight-count indictment on drug-conspiracy charges as investigators continued to round up other alleged chieftains in his gang. Watkeeta Valenzuela, 26, was charged with selling 59 grams of crack cocaine, according to the indictment. Among the government evidence are secretly recorded taped conversations and undercover drug purchases. Valenzuela, a high-ranking member of the Black P Stone Nation street gang, operated mainly at 54th and Bishop Streets, steps from Libby Elementary School, from August 1991, until at least February 1992, said Assistant U.S. Atty.

A street gang in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood has aggressively moved into a business long dominated by outlaw motorcycle gangs: the street corner sale of the illegal drug PCP, the FBI said in announcing charges Tuesday against 17 people. Five members of the Ambrose street gang were arrested Tuesday after arrests over the weekend of several suppliers and the shutdown of a Gary lab where PCP was manufactured, authorities said. At least three Ambrose crews sold $31,500 worth of PCP every week, the government alleged in court filings.

A former Clemente High School basketball star who went from being "one of the good kids" to a member of the Maniac Latin Disciples street gang was sentenced to 50 years in prison Thursday for murder. Dana Garrett, 21, blinked his eyes as Circuit Judge David Erickson imposed the sentence, delivering a harsh lecture against the evils of the gang culture. "It is a cancer that keeps eating away at young people, at the educational system," Erickson declared. "These are people who took pride in being called the Maniac Latin Disciplies.

Federal agents asked the founder of the Bacci pizzeria chain to drop by the Chicago police bomb and arson squad office last week to discuss the 2000 fire that damaged a building he owned in Little Italy (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). When Robert Di Diana (the surname as published has been corrected here and in subsequent references in this text) arrived at the West Side office, the agents said they had solved the case -- and that he was under arrest for allegedly hiring a street gang to burn down the building for insurance money, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation.